Wahlberg a flawed ex-cop in slick tale of betrayal

New reviews this week“Broken City” R — The narrative spins itself into a bit of a knot in this handsome, intermittently gripping neo-noir drama, in which all the characters, even the so-called good guys, are less than pure.

The complexity of the story and its emphasis on sharp dialogue versus mayhem will appeal to high-schoolers 16 and older, and the relatively understated violence, if not the strong language, makes that mostly OK.

Mark Wahlberg plays Billy Taggart, a New York police detective who, we learn in a quick prologue, is suspected of deliberately killing a rape-and-murder suspect. The mayor (Russell Crowe) and commissioner of police (Jeffrey Wright) force Billy to quietly resign, but they don’t prosecute.

Billy becomes a private investigator, and some seven years later, the mayor calls him: He wants his wife (Catherine Zeta-Jones) followed and her lover identified. Billy thinks he learns the truth, which involves the election campaign of an upstart candidate (Barry Pepper) seeking to unseat the mayor.

But what Billy thought was true may not be true at all, and his ability to judge isn’t helped by the fact that he falls off the wagon after years of sobriety when his actress girlfriend (Natalie Martinez) breaks up with him over his jealousy. Life is tough in the big city.

THE BOTTOM LINE: The violence in “Broken City” is relatively infrequent and not too graphic. We see one point-blank shooting on video and a head-banging, kicking fight. In his work as a private detective, Billy secretly photographs a woman in lingerie about to engage in a sexual encounter with a man, but the film cuts away. Another more explicit sex scene with toplessness occurs in Billy’s girlfriend’s new movie. Characters use strong profanity and sexually explicit language. Some of them drink a lot.

“The Last Stand” R — A clumsily constructed plot doesn’t prevent “The Last Stand” from being stubbornly entertaining, as we watch Arnold Schwarzenegger lock, load and lumber back into action.

The occasionally gory violence and strong profanity, lightened by a tongue-in-cheek style, make the movie OK for high-schoolers 16 and older. As R-rated films go, it’s not horrific.

As the sheriff of a tiny Arizona town, Ray Owens’ (Schwarzenegger) big-city years will soon come in handy. The sheriff and his deputies (Luis Guzman, Jaimie Alexander and Zach Gilford) are usually bored stiff in their quiet little hamlet near a canyon that marks the Mexican border. Then the FBI loses a prisoner (Eduardo Noriega), the head of a drug cartel, in a cleverly choreographed escape.

The agent in charge (Forest Whitaker) calls to warn Sheriff Owens that the convict may be heading his way in a supercharged Corvette, but to wait for the FBI to handle it. Clearly, he doesn’t know Sheriff Owens.

Soon the sheriff and his deputies, along with a wacky gun collector (Johnny Knoxville) who lets them use his arsenal, and a former Marine (Rodrigo Santoro) sitting in their jail, are facing down the drug lord’s advance team of thugs on the streets of their town. Then the escapee himself vrooms in.

THE BOTTOM LINE: Loud gunfire from all sorts of weapons from antique guns to assault rifles to machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades fills the movie. However, with a couple of exceptions — a body blown apart, a couple of bloody close-ups — the depiction of wounds and the spattering of blood are relatively understated for an R. Characters use a lot of profanity and there is brief, mild sexual innuendo.

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“Mama” PG-13 — Too creepy for middle-schoolers — and certainly too nightmarish for tweens — “Mama” has style and sensibility that will appeal to high-schoolers who like their horror with more art and less gore.

The vengeful phantom of the title only reveals herself a little at first, flitting darkly behind characters, then disappearing. When she grows violent, she doesn’t always kill, and her attacks are not graphic. It is the foreboding and the mystery of her that keep this handsomely wrought ghost story so fresh.

In a prologue, we learn of a troubled corporate executive (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau of TV’s “Game of Thrones”) who kills his partners, then his wife — all off-camera, though you hear a gunshot. He takes his two little daughters on a drive and crashes the car.

The three take refuge in an abandoned house in the woods. A phantom in the house violently stops the distraught father from hurting the girls.

The film then jumps five years ahead. The girls’ Uncle Lucas (also Coster-Waldau), an artist and their father’s twin, has been trying to find his nieces. Trackers discover them living as feral children in the abandoned house.

Lucas and his rock musician girlfriend, Annabel (Jessica Chastain), try to raise Victoria (Megan Charpentier) and her more feral little sister Lilly (Isabelle Nelisse). The phantom that protected the girls in the woods — Mama — has a jealous nature and a tragic story.

THE BOTTOM LINE: As the spirit of Mama grows stronger and more aggressive, she becomes more visible. Her face starts to emerge — elongated, sorrowful and angry. Stains in the walls, like rot, grow larger and release tentacles or noisy moths that portend death. Later scenes of violence — someone pushed by Mama down the stairs, someone’s neck snapped — are stylized, quick, and not graphic. The film includes occasional profanity and a brief love scene that never becomes explicit.